The cotton mills of Bombay not only dominated the landscape of Girangaon, influenced its social organization and informed its political traditions, but they also determined the structure of the city's economy. The organization of work in the industry conditioned the social organization of workers in the neighbour-hood. The extensive use of casual labour forced workers to maintain social connections beyond the workplace, whether in the village or the urban neigh-bourhood. Furthermore, employers depended upon jobbers to maintain a regular supply of labour in the face of fluctuating demand. In their turn, as we have seen, jobbers had to develop contacts within the neighbourhood to enable them to hire additional workers at short notice or lay them off when they were no longer needed. Thus, the operation of the jobber system also integrated the social spheres of workplace and neighbourhood.

The trend of investment in the textile industry was characteristically labourusing, which gave rise to substantial differences between mills and led to divergent and conflicting interests among the employers. By impeding combined action, these differences in turn limited the options before the employers. Moreover, it was a common tendency among the millowners to regulate production according to the short-term fluctuations of demand.